Vice President Steve Golding updates campus on SSI funding

VPFA says "impact of this lapsed payment is manageable"

Ohio University Vice President for Finance and Administration Steve Golding e-mailed the following letter about State Share of Instruction funding to faculty and staff on Oct. 13:

Dear Colleagues,

The purpose of my message today is to address some concerns voiced and to share with you some positive news about the impact to Ohio University of the recently discussed delay in receiving State Share of Instruction (SSI) funding for universities in the State.

In order to balance the State’s 2011 budget, as you know, there have been discussions regarding a delay of the June 2011 SSI payment for 21 days. Though the SSI June payment represents $9.2 million for the entire University ($7.6 million for Athens campus and the College of Medicine), I’m pleased to share with you that the impact of this lapsed payment is manageable.

The reason for this is that when the Board of Regents communicated last year there could be a delay in one of the SSI payments during this fiscal year, the University was prudent to take
necessary steps to prepare so that the resulting delay would not be a burden on the budget.

Specifically, the original budget for the 2010-11 biennium was built based on the Board of Regents January 2010 subsidy estimate for FY11. The updated subsidy projection the University received in June 2010 was $1.9M higher than what was actually projected to receive.

Additionally, the subsidy projection for FY11 included a deferred payment from FY10 of $5.3M ($4.8M for the Athens budget and $500,000 for the College of Medicine). Given the uncertainty in the State budget, the University did not add this payment into our budgeted revenues for the current fiscal year.

Therefore, after adjustments for the June 2010 subsidy calculation recalibration and not budgeting the deferred payment from FY10, the estimated net effect for Athens FY11 subsidy is a projected shortfall of about $133,000. For the College of Medicine and the regional campuses, this number will be somewhat higher but still manageable, based on what we know today.

The economic challenges and uncertainties facing our University are exceptionally demanding but it is important to recognize the efforts of last year’s budget development process to wisely plan for today’s reality.

I promise to keep you informed of our progress in planning and confronting the challenges.